Nearly all current college students will end up in careers where, at the
least, they use information systems on a daily basis. Many students, even those
in non-technical fields, will someday hold jobs where understanding the
operation and limits of computer systems will be advantageous. Yet most students
majoring in fields other than physics or engineering (and, unfortunately, many
students who study physics or engineering) will never learn just what a
semiconductor is, why optical fibers are so superior for transmitting data, or
why Moore's Law may soon fail. At Rensselaer, we developed a course entitled the
Science of Information Technology (ScIT) which covers the physics behind
computer systems. This course, which has no prerequisites beyond high school
physics, has been taken by (and received highly favorable reviews from) students
in diverse majors, including management, architecture, engineering, computer
science, information technology, and physics. The materials from this course are
all available on the web and are being modified for integration into more
traditional introductory courses. In this talk, I will present data from
attitudinal surveys and diagnostic tests motivating the need for coverage of
these topics in introductory courses for all audiences, and I will demonstrate
the available materials and suggest avenues for their implementation.